RYAN COMPANIES US, INC.
Bob West at bob.west@ryancompanies.com
or 904.237.3629
www.RYANCOMPANIES.com
As a national leader in designing
and building cold storage facilities,
Ryan understands the end-to-end
supply chain process and the key role
that distribution plays in effcient and
timely movement of product. Whether
it's designing energy effcient thermal
envelopes, refrigeration or lighting
systems, our focus is on building
solutions for your business.
and build out of the system about seven.
Ruane, a 34-year veteran at the company,
says they now ship an average of 54,000
cases per night and at peak times as much as
123,000 cases, at a speed that has gained
new business and helped them expand into
the growing craft beer business.
W&H; Systems selected Intelligrated con-
veyor systems and sortation units, Lucas pick-
by-voice technology, and a warehouse control
system (WCS) to direct inventory and opera-
tions and monitor equipment performance for
Wirtz Beverage.
The blending of mixed cases and full cases
on one route allows for faster delivery to more
locations, notes Chris Castaldi, manager of
business development at W&H; Systems. "It's
all software-driven," he says.
Food and beverage manufacturers in gen-
eral are going to more layered quantities, not
single-case quantities, notes Dan Labell, presi-
dent of Westfalia.
Several solutions providers point to multi-
shuttle systems as more time efficient.
"Access to the stored goods, ranging from
trays, layers to pallets, is done by means
of shuttles," notes David Blanchard, man-
ager of applications engineering for the U.S.
automated systems division at SSI Schaefer,
the Germany-based logistics provider. "The
requested load units are moved to lift transfer
stations and buffered there. Individual access
of the lifts to the transfer stations enable the
sequencing of retrieval operations. Thanks to
this layout, almost any number of picking and
shipping stations can be configured, integrated
and sequenced individually. Thus, necessary
load units can be forwarded independently and
in sequence to every workstation."
Mixed-load palletizing has been especially
driven by the need for warehouses to ship to
multiple channels, notes Mark Steinkamp,
director of solutions development at Intelligrat-
ed. "You're seeing the mixed-load pallets being
shipped more and more," he says.
Systems have to build the pallet according
to the right weight and product mix for it to be
stable, Steinkamp says. A pallet can include
Coke, cereal and soup cans, but they must be
in the right positions to be a stable load with-
out damaging product. "That's where robots
are going to be most effective," he says. A lot
of customers are interested in this as a way to
get products delivered faster. Pallets can be
built according to the stop.
"The (robotic) shuttle gives you very dense
storage in a warehouse," he notes These shut-
tles allow more product to be stored in smaller
spaces. For this system to work, the warehouse
needs storage and picking media, sequencing
media and sortation media, he says.
Steinkamp sees the robotic shuttle becom-
ing more prevalent in the U.S. as the big
megastores become distribution centers (DCs)
for smaller neighborhood stores. "We defi-
nitely are seeing a shift in the store format"
to smaller stores, he notes. In this, the U.S. is
following Europe.
Independent research indicates Steinkamp
is correct in his assessment of retail trends.
The average square footage of supermarkets
in the U.S. has been falling since 2006, and it
is now roughly 46,000 square feet, according
to the research firm, Packaged Facts. "The
pendulum definitely is swinging back to smaller
store formats," analysts wrote in a recent
report, noting Walmart is expanding its smaller-
format stores. Kroger also has a small-format
store called Turkey Hill Market, which averages
about 6,800 square feet, the report notes.
Omnichannel fulfillment grows
Omnichannel selling further supports this
need for multi-channel order fulfillment.
Supermarkets are becoming pickup desti-
nations for Internet orders, Steinkamp says.
The DCs are becoming sites of "forward pick
media" for enabling stores to become destina-
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